ELL:  A Major Setback

Education is necessary in order to have a respectable standard of living, but sometimes getting an education or getting the adequate education is difficult due to the setbacks some students face.  Many students like myself have experienced these setbacks, as was fortunate enough to overcome those obstacles.  The obstacle I am referring to is ELL (English Language Learners).  This program is meant for those students who don’t have English as a first language.  ELL is supposed to teach students the required skills in order to properly communicate in the English language.  Truth of the matter is that this program does not really teach much.  From my point of view this program is just a major setback for many students.  I agree that some students are just not prepared to be enrolled in regular English only classes, but through the few years I was in this program in JR High and one year in high school, I got to know a lot a peers that had good English speaking and writing skills are were not allowed to get out of this program.  I was able to get out of this program thanks to the pressure my parents put on my counselor, once I took the test that is required to get out of ELL I was able to enroll in regular classes which made my journey to college a lot more easier.

            The reason why I think this program is a setback is because even though some students are fluent in English they are unable to pass the required to get of the program because the class does not actually teach the skills necessary to pass the exam, and just in general, the exam is very difficult, some teachers that I spoke told me that students who have English as a first language would have trouble passing this test.

            In the 2013-2014 school year there were about 1.4 million students involved in ELL inCalifornia public schools, which about 22% of students enrolled, in public education.  The number of students in ELL programs has been constantly increasing throughout the years and statistics show that California is one of the states with a higher number of students in this program.  Also, cities have the largest concentration of students in ELL.

            From our textbook we can see that Hispanics have a low percentage of population with a bachelor’s degree or higher, also the average GPA for a Hispanic students is 2.84 behind Asians and whites.  For me, as someone who has experienced this program, I would put some blame in the system for the poor performance of Hispanics and other minorities who don’t have English as a first language, but I also understand that not all the blame can be placed on ELL since there are many other factors that affect student performance.  My personal story sheds light on institutional racism.  The public school system in California has failed to develop a program for English learners that actually helps them develop useful skills, rather than just crate a program that holds back student from performing at their full potential in regular classes.
The idea of Racism Persists even though laws no longer permit it because this type of behavior has been part of the world for a very long time and it is difficult to be left behind, in some way racist acts have been normalized to some point.  Another reason why racism persists might be because of structural racism.  Structural racism keeps minorities from having upward mobility freely by putting obstacles on their way.  Racism also allows wealthy whites stay in a position of power since it is difficult for minorities to get to a position of power where they can have more influence on decision making.